In a press conference at his law office in Goshen, Sussman argued the amended proposal for the county's 21 legislative districts went the opposite way by creating a district in the City of Newburgh with an 85 percent majority of Hispanic and African-American residents. He said that amounted to "stacking" — a practice in which minority voting power is limited by consolidating those voters in a single district.

James Rollins, president of the Middletown chapter of the NAACP, argued the Legislature was violating the spirit of the Voting Rights Act by developing its plan in near-secrecy, holding no public hearing on the revisions and preparing to adopt the plan with little time left to recruit candidates for this year's elections.

"I want them to start from scratch," he said.

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the proposed legislative lines on Friday, with a deadline bearing down on them to either accept the proposal — and weather criticism about the rushed, closed process — or reject it, which would likely mean running for election under the current lines this year and then running again next year with a redrawn map.

Legislature Chairman Michael Pillmeier and fellow Republican Legislator Katie Bonelli crafted the redistricting plan, which was later altered in the Newburgh and Middletown areas after speakers warned at a public hearing on March 11 that the absence of a majority-minority district might violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The amended proposal included a City of Newburgh district with a 59 percent Hispanic majority.

That would be the only place in which one minority group holds a majority, although three other proposed districts — taking up another swath of Newburgh and most of Middletown — each would have a combined majority of Hispanic and African-American residents.